Awards: Rooney Prize; Kirkus Finalists; Cundill Longlist

Poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa won the €10,000 (about $11,180) Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, Ireland's oldest literary award, which this year celebrates its 40th anniversary, the Irish Times reported. Ireland Chair of Poetry and selection committee member Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin described the winner as "a poet to watch, with a fresh view of the world: apparently ordinary houses, shops, common objects and activities. The sureness of her touch and the skill with which she handles language and shapes her poems are almost invisible, but it is through them that she achieves the feat of making us look again at the usual and illuminates its pulsating strangeness."

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Finalists have been chosen for the 2016 Kirkus Prize. Winners in three categories, each of whom receives $50,000, will be announced on November 3.

Mary Beard for SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (Liveright)Robert J. Gordon for The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War (Princeton University Press)Thomas W. Laqueur for The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remain (Princeton University Press)Philippe Sands for East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) David Wootton for The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution (Stuart Proffitt)Andrea Wulf for The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World (Knopf, John Murray Publishers)

Three finalists will be announced in early October; the winner will be announced on November 17.